Quintais de Olinda - uma leitura indiciária sobre sua gênese

This article aims to reflect, from the documentary evidence of the historical and stay on the formation of the gardens (backyard) in the village of Olinda, northeastern Brazil. Founded in the mid sixteenth century, the village became one of the main towns of the Portuguese Empire, being quite the referenced reports at the time and represented in the iconography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The wealth that represented the town encourages the invasion of the West India Company in 1630, that the difficulty of mastering your urban space, transferring the administrative core for the region of the port: Recife. This change puts a marginal situation Olinda, which among other effects, allowed the urban space maintained to this day its original features. This legacy has made the city achieving the title of World Heritage by Unesco. Although the gardens constitute a significant part of the historical and, therefore, a considerable part of that heritage, they end up receiving a different treatment with respect to buildings. Little attention has been directed to the subject by those who investigate the urban planning in Brazil. And it is in response to this gap that this research stands as an initial step to studies on the formation of the backyards of Olinda, knowing, above all, their failure to exhaust the numerous questions arising from the investigative process. The main research sources were used to historical cartography, reports of time and permanence of the historic site.